Avoiding 'worse-case' climate warming is big news. But is it true?

Claims that climate scientists have abandoned their most dire scenario have been widely misunderstood. While the highest emissions pathway is now considered unlikely, evidence suggests the climate system may still be tracking toward dangerously high levels of warming.

by David Spratt, first published at Pearls&Irritations

Figure 1: RCPs and SSPs

Occasionally, climate science is big news. On 26 May, the New York Times headlined: “Why scientists retired the dire climate scenario used for over a decade”. A good story!

The Australian, true to form, went with “Climate doomsday scenarios just got a major rewrite”, and in Jeff Bezos’s Washington Post it was  “The climate apocalypse? Don’t count on it”. There were a host of similar headlines.

Climate deniers and Donald Trump used an old playbook to claim scientific fraud (surprise!), but were called out, with ‘Trump twisted a climate debate beyond recognition’ and ‘Factcheck: Trump’s false claims about the IPCC and ‘RCP8.5’ climate scenario’.